Republican legislative leadership in the State of Grover

In yesterday's post on the Pledge of Allegiance to Grover Norquist, commenter Alec provided a list of members of the Minnesota Legislature who have superseded their oath of office as legislators with an oath to a genuine svengali. Thirty-seven members of the Minnesota Legislature have promised Grover that no matter what happens, no matter what calamity strikes, no matter what damage might occur to the citizens, commerce, or cities of the state, they will not raise taxes. They've turned part of their brains off: the thinking part, leaving only the lizard stub at the switch.

But even that is not the worst part. Three out of four of the top leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature signed the pledge. Kurt Zellers, the Speaker, and Matt Dean, the Majority Leader, signed on in the House. In the Senate, Junior the Deputy, Geoff Michel signed. The only one MIA is Amy Koch; unaccountably missing, since she has been the biggest foghorn for no tax increase all session.

In a recent presser, the Deputy said that tax cuts were in Republicans' DNA. Nah, they're just especially vulnerable to the power of suggestion. Grover: look into my eyes. Deputy: yes Master.

The leadership controls committee assignments and the agenda for their respective bodies. How do you like the fact that, by and large, the Republican leadership is more concerned about what Grover thinks than what you think?

I think you should let them know. Just go to the legislature's website, look 'em up, and give 'em a shout!

Photo from here.

I pledge allegiance

Jack Ohman cartoon

I pledge allegiance to the Grover,

And to the greed for which he stands,

Serving rich people as my God,

With Liberty and Justice for Them.

For all the Grovers in the Minnesota Legislature, who pledged their allegiance to Grover Norquist instead of the State of Minnesota and its citizens, who we all thought they had pledged to serve.

You can see a list of the Minnesota pledge signers in the comments, thanks to Alec.

Cartoon by by Jack Ohman, Tribune Media Services, via the Strib.

From the book of Titus to you

A great deal has been said about Bob Vander Plaats' pledge signed last week by presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. The part of the pledge implying that African American children may have been better off under slavery because two parents were present has received widespread attention.

But one section of the pledge jumped right out at me. As the aging product of an Irish Catholic culture who were said to "breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin," I remember when the news of yet another child on the way brought not just happiness, but worry dread to the mothers in my neighborhood. Another bundle of joy, but at the same time another one to feed, clothe, and care for. The church wouldn't have it ant other way. So when I read this part of the pledge, I was creeped out:

“Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.”

Yep, "robust childbearing and reproduction." Trying to bolster the underlying assumptions in this part of the pledge, Vander Plaats provides a footnote that makes reference to several "sources." There's Mark Steyn's America Alone, a 2006 polemic about how Muslims are outbreeding Europeans, Ben Wattenberg's Fewer, about which Publisher's Weekly said "starts off as a persuasive statistical analysis [that] dwindles into demagoguery," and Julian (everything-will-last-forever) Simon's thirty-year-old The Ultimate Resource.

Both Spotty and MrMNO have read Steyn's racial views into the pledge, that what Vander Plaats means by "robust childbearing and reproduction" is a dog whistle to those who worry that the United States is destined to become a minority majority country. For those who fear growing influence and power in citizens not of European descent, the pledge represents a call-out to their fears.

But to Robin Marty and I, the pledge is more of a shout out to the Christian Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements. As Robin points out, those more familiar with the movement saw it right away and pegged this as endorsing coercive childbearing cloaked in economic strength. Make no mistake: control over women who desperately love their children is easily accomplished by forcing them to bear more. The document signed by Bachmann - one probably that will soon be signed by Pawlenty - is a coded message for barefoot and pregnant.

The pledge represents just one more step in an assault on women's rights undertaken by the Bachmanns of the world and the men who control them. It started ostensibly as criticism of abortion rights many years ago that has now become a full-out attack on the legitimacy of birth control.

Vander Plaats is best known for his campaign last year to remove judges from the Iowa Supreme Court, an undertaking one former aid has called obsessive and a threat to the Iowa judiciary. But beyond that, Vander Plaats evidences a deep seated antipathy to women who don't fall into line with his world view. In a post that has since been removed from his website, he praised certain marriages:

Studies have shown that divorce rates between Thai girls, Filipina girls and foreign men are lower than other marriages.

We will leave to you, dear reader, to figure out what is meant by that assertion from a Christian patriarch.

All of this leads to one inescapable conclusion: Bob Vander Plaats is a cesspool of misogyny the depth of which we have yet to plumb.

Note: The illustration is from another place and time where the strategic value of robust childbearing and reproduction was particularly valued.

Sadly, poor Michele is misunderstood again!

Before we get to that, however, I note that the Stib's Sunday tag team of Heartburn & Gas (tm) features Gas this morning. Suffering from a form of political Tourette Syndrome, Jason Lewis periodically leaves his usual state of catatonia to shout "Wealth Redistribution!" before slipping back out of it entirely. Sadly, he's seen specialists around the world, but no one has been able to help.

Personally, I think he just missed the day at nursery school where the kids learned about sharing toys and cookies, so he's been forced to go around with his arse painfully clenched ever since, depriving his brain of blood and oxygen. A good Freudian therapist -- such as Sigmund Spot -- might be able to take him back to his painful childhood and help. We'll see.

Lewis thinks that educating children and taking care of sick people is "redistribution of wealth." As if he earned it all by himself. Really, no more needs to be said about this poisonous blowhard, at least today.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, poor misunderstood Michele. It seems like just yesterday -- or was it Friday, or maybe even Thursday? -- that the Corn Queen proudly stepped forward to ink the deal pledging fealty to the FAMiLY LEADER in an effort to suck up to every bat-shit crazy tea bag conservative who has ever heard of Bob Vander Plaats. (Roughly, "Vander Plaats" means "from the place," although the place is not, and probably cannot, be identified or even found.)

Bachmann signed Vander Plaats' loyalty oath, which contained the usual list of bagger baloney, but this one was special. Really special. This stunner was part of it:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Yes, slavery was such a socially stabilizing institution.

Having been laughed at, scorned, and mocked for three days, Michele says that she was misunderstood entirely. Why, she didn't mean that when she signed the pledge that she agreed with all of it. Heaven forfend! The part about slave babies being better off was in the preamble, kind of like the Preamble to the Constitution.

A Bachmann spokeswoman said earlier Saturday that reports the congresswoman had signed a vow that contained the slavery language was wrong, noting it was not in the "vow" portion.

"She signed the 'candidate vow,' " campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, and distanced Bachmann from the preamble language, saying, "In no uncertain terms, Congresswoman Bachmann believes that slavery was horrible and economic enslavement is also horrible."

It wasn't clear whether Bachmann had read the "slavery" language in the preamble, but Stewart later added Bachmann "stands behind the candidate vow - which makes absolutely no reference to slavery."

But even Plaatz plotzed:

A social conservative Iowa group has retracted language regarding slavery from the opening of a presidential candidates' pledge, amid a growing controversy over the document that Michele Bachmann had signed and Rick Santorum committed to.

The original "marriage vow" from the Family Leader, unveiled last week, included a line at the opening of its preamble, which suggested that black children born into slavery were better off in terms of family life than African-American kids born today.

The Politico article quotes Vander Plaats's organization:

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man," the group's officials said in a statement. "We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

Samples of the "wise insight" undoubted included:

Are you people completely crazy?

What are you trying to do? Our Wikipedia revisionists can't keep up with Michele Bachmann as it is!

Who did you test the message of this pledge on? The KKK?

Hang in there, Timmy; you may have a shot yet.

No need to equivocate here, Kevin

Most of you are aware of the pledge that our gal Michele gleefully signed that, inter alia, said this:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

It elicited the kind of wonder, astonishment and disgust that a signature move from Michele Bachmann can provoke.

But rather than risk a hasty denunciation, chief Bachmann follower at the Strib, Kevin Diaz, weighed in with measured tones:

But to Bachmann’s detractors, the language on slavery represents a further misreading of history. Apart from the intimation of better conditions in the old antebellum South, the vow seems to overlook a brutal historical record of African-American slave families being broken up for sale. [emphasis added]

Jesus, Kevin, grow a pair.

It sucks to be John Boehner

That's the title of a Rick Ungar post on his blog at Forbes.com. Ungar recounts the times he mocked and criticized Boehner (a considerable list), but then says this:

Still, you have to admit that it sucks to be John Boehner.

Imagine if you had to make decisions regarding the successful operation of your own home and your three year old, five year old and two year old each had a full vote in the decisions that are ultimately taken.

That's a preamble, of course, to an observation of what it must be like to be the Speaker of the Tea Party House of Representatives:

Welcome to John Boehner’s world – a world where he is the leader of a cadre of children who have yet to mature to the point where they warrant election to the post of school hall monitor let alone the halls of Congress.

And Ungar says this about the back-stabbing weasel, Eric Cantor:

If these immature Members of Congress were not enough of a problem for an old school deal maker like Boehner, the Speaker has to contend with a scheming GOP Majority Leader in Eric Cantor who waits behind every door with a dagger aimed squarely at his boss’s heart.

Which made me think of the above graphic that Tild did some time ago for me.

But only because Michele moved to Minnesota

Here's the lede from a post at Truth Wins Out:

I mentioned in a post yesterday that Bob Vander Plaats, Iowa’s Most Unhinged Wingnut [emphasis added], and his organization the FAMiLY LEADER [sic] had drafted a pledge for GOP candidates to sign, which affirms their anti-gay bigotry and hatred. Michele Bachmann was, of course, the first to sign it. [emphasis also added] But as usual, there’s more to the story, and anti-gay bigots never just traffic in one kind of hatred. Baratunde Thurston reports that indeed the very first bullet point in this pledge absolutely glorifies slavery. Here it is:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

Bob Vander Plaats is a Republican gadfly from Sioux City.

That's just a stunner, isn't it?

When they were slaves, couples could not get legally married. They were PROPERTY, remember? As were their children. The families could be split up and sold off at the whim of the slave owner.

Mere words are inadequate to describe what a base, poisonous, demagogic harridan Michele Bachmann is.

Frank and Friends

That's Frank "God is my cover" Vennes and Michele "Mine, too!" Bachmann, Tim "Governor Gutshot" Pawlenty, Norm "That's funny, he was here a minute ago!" Coleman, and Ron Eibensteiner, who passed through here without leaving enough of an impression to give him a nickname. Eibensteiner, for those of you who cannot remember him at all, was the chair of the MNGOP years ago, so he's Tony Sutton's political grandpa, or great grandpa; it's hard to keep track.

This group of people -- with the exception of Frank, who knew better -- thought Frank deserved a pardon from his conviction for money laundering, firearms and drug offenses. So, Michele, Timmy, Norm and Ron proceeded to try to get him one, making their entreaties to then President Bush's conspiratorial pal, Karl Rove.

The fact that Frank spread a bunch of money around to assist the political fortunes of the aforesaid, well, four, had absolutely nothing to do with it! Nothing!

None of them questioned why a convicted felon would contribute so lavishly to politicians, especially a Congresswoman who didn't represent him. Nor, apparently, did anybody wonder why Frank seemed to have so damn much money throw around.

Now we have a pretty good idea about the answers to those questions.

One of the people who has been checking up on Frank for some time is Karl Bremer, who has started a new -- and excellent -- series on the whole l'affaire Vennes. Another is Ken Avidor, who has regaled me at Drinking Liberally with Frank Vennes anecdotes for a long time.

This unfolding story involves not merely one, but two, candidates for President of the United States. You ought to follow it.

Wrong Sutton, guys!

Tony Sutton has been hired by the RPM to do his grunt work at a fat 100K per year.

This is the same Tony Sutton who screwed up the RPM books so bad they still aren't straightened out. Tony had to be rescued from that job by then State Auditor Pat Anderson who made Tony her feather bed deputy at the State Auditor's office (the RPM is good at feather bedding, see Michael Brodkorb, Chas Anderson, Davey Strom, Margaret Martin, et al.)

The is the same Tony Sutton who still can't pay the bills for the photocopies he ordered in the pointless and fruitless Emmer recount.

Pretty clearly, the Sutton that the RPM meant to hire (and should have) was this guy.

Willie Sutton. He might have actually helped with the money problems.

Republican suicide bombers

Killing for ideology

From an editorial in the New York Times:

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country. President Obama has done so twice and faces an emboldened opposition willing to create chaos in the credit markets rather than agree to modest revenue increases from the richest people. On Tuesday, he urged everyone to leave ultimatums at the door in this week’s talks, but the Republican Party has shown no willingness to do so.

The editorial concludes:

In Minnesota, there is now a chance to draw a line and say, no further.

The problem, of course, is that it is difficult to negotiate with a suicide bomber.

Kurt & Amy's steaming shitburger of revenue!

This one begs for more attention.

At the same time he's saying that he doesn't want to burden our children and grandchildren with debt, the only proposal for additional revenue from the MNGOP is, you guessed it, more debt, in the form of "tobacco bonds" (remember that one of the reasons for the tobacco fund was to take care of health care cost of smoking?) and another shift of $700 million in K-12 school aid funds. We already did that last biennium to the tune of nearly two billion dollars.

Both ideas are just borrowing from the future.

Then, after serving up this steaming shitburger, Kurt and Amy have the gall to say, Since we've come so far, we want every social disfigurement initiative we've thought up for the last twenty years. Do we have a deal, guv?

You couldn't make up these grifters and patent medicine salesmen if you tried.

Downeyville

This afternoon (July 6th) at 4:30, Downeyville will be erected on the Capitol lawn. The event is sponsored by AFSCME and MAPE:

The laid-off [by the state] workers will set up an unemployed town called “Downeyville,” named after the state representative from Edina who would wipe out the jobs of 5,000 state employees and eliminate the collective bargaining rights of all state employees and public school teachers in Minnesota.

But that’s just the beginning: If Republican leaders get their way, their cuts-only budget will also eliminate 30,000 public- and private-sector jobs – permanently.

The photo is of one of the many Hoovervilles in the United States during the Depression.

On the agenda July 5th

Yesterday, Special Master Kathleen Blatz had this item on the calendar:

What do you suppose the auto dealers want?

Obviously, it is to get the automobile titling system going again so dealers can sell and people can buy cars.

And the sons of Pullman porters

Thanks to Two Putt Tommy for reminding me about Steve Goodman's great song about a trip across America by train.



Have a great Fourth of July, everybody. I started mine by riding in a parade.

Maybe he's the best man

Kurt Zellers - who has always struck me as an aging frat boy stuffed uncomfortably in a suit, and on his way to Blutto Blutarsky's wedding - said this recently:

"We will not saddle our children and grandchildren with mounds of debts, with promises for funding levels that will not be there in the future," said House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove. "This is debt that they can't afford. It's debt that we can't afford right now."

Perhaps it's just his carelessness of speech. If you read a little deeper into the same article, you will see this was one of the proposals of the MNGOP:

The GOP proposed delaying another $700 million in payments owed to schools, which would add to the more than $1 billion the state already owes K-12 schools.

Republicans also offered to issue "tobacco bonds" of an unspecified amount to cover any remaining budget gap. Sources said Dayton considered the offer, but he criticized it as unwise borrowing late Thursday.

So I ask, who is engaging in Wimpy's hamburger politics? (Thank you, Kevin Staunton.) Who is the one who is proposing to pay for what we get now?

And who is saddling our children with debt? It isn't the governor.

Rachel's got it Bass Ackward!

According to Rachel Stassen-Berger, this is the moment for Governor Dayton to decide.

Yup, the Lege has nothing to do with it. Never mind the unethical Republican blackmail of bringing its social disfigurement agenda into negotiations at the eleventh hour.

My heavens, Rachel, do you share an office with Katie, the patron saint of prevaricators and dissemblers?

While it is true that the governor is the only adult in the room, it's a libel to lay the problem at his feet.

St. Katie, the patron saint of prevaricators and dissemblers

Words from the Clumsy Propagandist

Katherine Kersten must have gotten her work in early, because her column for tomorrow's paper is already up on the Strib website. It won't surprise you to know that, according to Katie, the shutdown is all Mark Dayton's fault, in fact, it is part of a sinister plot:

In recent weeks, DFL minority leaders Paul Thissen and Tom Bakk have been glued to Dayton's side throughout budget negotiations. Why? If Dayton -- with the help of DFL legislators -- could parlay a shutdown into a DFL legislative takeover in 2012, the political payoff for the party would be huge.

Dayton won't face reelection until 2014, and the public's memory of the current fiscal train wreck will be long gone by then.

Well, just like Amy and Junior, who have been glued to Michael Brodkorb's side! At least all the DFLers are elected officials.

While there's no profit in analyzing the entire dog's breakfast, there are a few detours from reality I do want to mention. Here's the first one:

In 2010, he squeaked into office by a mere 9,000 votes, in a political climate that swept fiscally conservative Republicans into power across the nation and in the Minnesota Legislature.

Katie engages in pure revisionism here. Each and every candidate for state-wide office (the governor and the constitutional offices: Secretary of State, etc.) was won by a DFLer. Spread across the state, the House turned over by a margin much smaller than Dayton's margin over Emmer. (I had a link for that; I'll find it back.)

And just as seven of eight dentists chew Dentyne gum, Katie says this:

On June 20, a KSTP/USA Survey poll found that 87 percent want state spending to decrease or to stay the same, and only 8 percent want it to increase. Of the 60 percent who want it decreased, two-thirds say cuts to services are "acceptable."

But the newspaper that tolerates Katie's scribbling found this in its own poll:

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they favor a blend of higher taxes and service reductions to tackle the state's $5 billion projected deficit. Just 27 percent said they want state leaders to balance the budget solely through cuts.

Katie says that the Republicans proposed a six percent budget increase for the biennium. Not true according to Politifact.

And there's this one, so transparent it doesn't even need a link for refutation:

The Legislature sent its bills to Dayton six weeks before the session ended, but he frittered away the time for negotiation. He vetoed all nine bills at the end of the session, so legislators had no chance to rework them to address his concerns.

If the governor had gotten budget bills six weeks before the end of the session, and neglected to veto them until the session ended, they would be law today. What happened, in fact, was that the poorly-led legislature dumped budget bills on the Governor's desk in the closing days - or minutes - of the session.

Finally, Katie complains that Governor Dayton didn't sign at least some of the bills, the less controversial ones. But Mark Dayton is cannier than that. In a negotiation, you don't give your opponents the things they want and then try to negotiate for what you want. That's a recipe for losing your shirt.

UPDATE: Here's a better link on the 6% claim.

Amy Koch's personality defects

Just the title is a shocker, isn't it? But it's the kind of thing that righties say or intimate about Mark Dayton all the time: he's an alcoholic; keep his bed warm at Hazelden, etc., and tweeting about him being mentally ill.

But how oriented as to time as place is a person who says this, knowing she is going to drop the Republican social disfigurement agenda on the governor's desk as a list of demands later in the day:

"We felt very, very optimistic yesterday morning that we were there, that we had a deal," Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, R-Buffalo, said Friday.

The governor is quoted in the same article as saying the policy issues "drove us apart." Gee, no kidding.

Tony Cornish must be pissed!

When the Republican leadership came up with its list of social engineering demands last night, it didn't even include Shoot First on the laundry list.

The photo of Tony in the Hall of Dead Things (his House office) is from WCCO.

Nice state ya got there, bub

Pity if anything happened to it.

Apparently this is what compromise looks like to the Minnesota GOP: We let the economy of the State of Minnesota function. You, on the other hand, agree to ban scientific research we think might involve cloning, enact illegal restrictions on the constitutionally protected rights of women, make it harder for people to vote, gut teachers unions and prevailing wage requirements, enact tort reform, give up transportation bonding, and agree to a redistricting plan that assures our part wins most elections. Plus a bunch of other stuff that will reshape what we all know Minnesota to be.

Keep in mind that this “offer” was made less than 48 hours ago, not in the early days of the legislative session.